Wednesday, October 04, 2006

* BR at TurfSports writes about why jumping on the Spartan bandwagon can be so dangerous (scroll down, bottom of the page).

* Sure we bag on Buckeyes sporting Buckstaches, but Michigan is not immune from off-the-fiedl problems. As such, The Realests have a little trivia for you: match the player or coach with his transgression.

* Tony Gerdeman of The Ozone takes a look at the Wolverine victory over Minnesota in his always excellent and fair Michigan Monday column.

* It's Oklahoma-Texas this week and many 'Horn fans will be kicking back at their tailgates and downing an ice cold bottle of Oklahoma Suks beer. Yes, it's real.

7 comments:

Just a thought
said...

OU-Texas game brings me to a point I've meaning to ask this blog site about, but never really saw an in (or if I did, I was too busy, too drunk, or felt blabbering about something else more important). But I digress- my point is, does anyone besides me get tired of the media (especially Brent Mushberger) over-using game nicknames (or even player nicknames). What's the M-Spot over/under for how many times whoever is carrying the Texas-OU game says "Red River Shootout" this week leading up to the game? Or the Iron Bowl for AU/Bama later in the season? I know Anthony Thomas was near and dear to many fans hearts on this site (and rightly so), but did you guys get tired of the media using his A-Train nickname? How about Great Dayne's, or others?

A Texas blog called Burnt Orange Nation put up the question last week: Which do you prefer - Red River Rivalry (the new, television version), Red River Shootout, or simply Texas/OU (or OU/Texas if you're from the wrong side of the Red River)?

The old school fans fell squarely on the side of calling it the Texas/OU game. All this "Red River" stuff was dreamed up by/for television anyway. It looked like the younger fans preferred "Shootout" over "Rivalry," reflecting the violent nature of the game itself. A far from scientific analysis, but reflective of the overall mood, I believe.

Television is changing the entire landscape of college football - some for the better, more for the worse. They won't be allowed to call it "The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party" when Georgia plays Florida later this month. Hell, I grew up with that nickname, identified with it every year as a nickname I liked. Now that one's being phased OUT by TV or prudish mores or what have you.

Being from Alabama, calling it the Iron Bowl is fine because people down here found it less confusing than switching the first team mentioned back and forth every year depending on who has home field. (Insert your own joke here.)

I guess on the one hand you could say that you know it's a big game because it has a nickname. Others, like Texas/OU or Michigan/Ohio State (or Ohio State/Michigan), you simply leave alone for tradition's sake. Television is trying desparately to create tradition on the spur of the moment, and it simply can't be done.

(Musberger is the worst about nicknames, and his new trend of calling certain players that he's especially fond of by their first name is particularly annoying. Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith is simply "Troy" when Brent calls the game.)

Yost: I'm asking if there's anybody in the UM multimediaverse that does the "know your enemy" thing about OSU like Gerdeman does about UM, but - BUT - in the same respectful fashion. If I may just ramble on for a moment...

I really - REALLY - love you guys, except for the fact that you're That School Up North. I watch UM whenever they don't conflict w/ the Buckeyes, and I'm glad to see that last year (and, in some respects, the couple/few years prior) appears to have been an aberration that's been corrected. I've spent half my life in a little town about 15 miles east of Toledo, and it's a real battleground up there between us, fan-wise. I saw Archie Griffin play in the 'Shoe when I was five (owing to the fact that my dad was a prof at OSU at the time, and my stepdad went to OSU for undergrad and dental school, and HIS dad was in TBDBITL. My stepdad used to start playing TBDBITL 8-tracks with the volume turned up to eleven at about 8 a.m. most fall Saturdays, but guys like me, like I said, love the Wolverines - only just a little less than we hate them.

The point is: don't you think there ought to be something like "Michigan Monday" on y'all's end? I remember that back in the days of unlimited scholarships and 10-game seasons, the story was that Woody used to use most of the Spring practices and a lot of the fall camp to get a head start on preparing for the Wolverines. I bet Bo did the same thing. It's a wonderful symbiosis, isn't it?

Yost: I'm not near there now, living in Columbus (where I've spent the other half of my life, except for brief detours to Oxford, OH; D.C.; and Charlottesville, VA). Sylvania's a northern suburb of Toledo, with two high schools (imaginatively named Northview and Southview). Since you asked, I'm from a little farm town called Oak Harbor - directly between Toledo and Sandusky (home of Orlando Pace and Cedar Point - and I ordered them that way for a reason), and about 10 miles West of Port Clinton (which, for anybody who knows what it is, is where you get on the ferry to Put-In-Bay).

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